Travelling over the past three years have become an emotionally charged and uncertain experience. Have our feelings towards airports changed? I decided to ask two groups of people to help me understand the current travel disruption: CX professionals working for airline companies, and frequent passengers.
These testimonials are from those who once loved to travel, but now have a bittersweet feeling about what the journey will entail. We are witnessing how behaviours change again due to experiences of fear, lack of trust, and increased prices. Those keywords that marked two years behind us now still often ruling in the post-Covid realities.
Understanding the context: travelling in post-Covid Europe
According to Air Transport Action Group, under normal circumstances, aviation and tourism facilitate 87.7 million jobs worldwide. In September 2021, the same group predicted that with the shutdown, and poor treatment of airport employees, air travel won’t recover until 2024. Since the pandemic started, the aviation industry lost 2.3 million jobs globally. Along with the hospitality and tourism industry, airline companies staff decided to switch careers and build more stable lives by exploring other earning opportunities.
If we assume that airports are often stressful, imagine how one might feel when encountering unexpected occasions. Picture a long line of security checks, lost baggage, cancelled flights, or lengthy delays. These events will likely happen in the following few years in the post-Covid Europe countries. Is there anything CX creatives can do about it?
Miami International Airport (MIA) announced in August 2022 the launch of a chatbot called “Mia” to assist with customer service inquiries. MIA was able to reduce its average customer service resolution time to less than 10 minutes and keep travellers informed. While some airline companies react and learn fast from the disruptions, there are concepts of trust, loyalty, and integrity that are harder to be gained with a chatbot.
The passengers’ perspective: trust as a new currency
In May 2022, in Ireland, more than 1,000 people missed their flights on a single day due to long queries. The passengers at Heathrow airport in London faced the same issue. I talked to one frequent passenger, who has been to 10 airports in 7 countries from in just under a year. She shared interesting real experiences and insights.
‘With airports, trust has become a lot more important in the post-pandemic world. For example, I flew into Heathrow in June and, not only did I not receive my luggage, but there were hundreds of bags scattered around the arrival hall. In many of them, food had gone off, and the smell was unbearable. Obviously, that did not ignite much trust in them finding or delivering my bags. However, a very friendly employee explained to me that my airline is a customer of a reliable delivery company, and they would deliver my bags the next day, which they did. All these abandoned bags were due to be delivered by another, failing delivery service. This comforted me, but I still don’t have much trust in Heathrow and would avoid flying there if I could.’
Any experience researcher would wonder what airport CX teams might do to turn these non-places into an experience one embraces with confidence rather than anxiety.
‘I used to love to travel and still do, but now I feel a lot more anxious. I’m asking questions to myself that I never used to. Questions like – Have I got all the right documents? Is the connecting flight going to be ok? Will I get my luggage? Will the train be on time and will I make my flight? Too many unknowns, delays and regulations. I think airports would benefit from training the staff to understand that passengers feel more nervous than usual’, she added.
CX professionals’ perspective: investing in customer service
To understand better what CX professionals think about this, I talked to Thirza Schaap and Peter Verheijde, who both worked for Air France KLM for more than 20 years. To my question about how the trust relationship has changed post-pandemic, she shared the following:
‘Trust is the basic level of delivery in the customer need pyramid. Think about it – if a company loses your luggage or cancels your flight, you need to really be a loyal customer to trust flying with them again.. I think COVID hasn’t really changed this interaction. Maybe even in a positive way, the feeling that we’re all in this together, not having high expectations when flying because you’ve heard about everything that can go wrong and being super satisfied if everything goes well. In the end, CX is about a relationship you have between customer and company.’
However, many reports over the last year emphasised that it takes a lot to build trust, but just one bad experience for it to be lost. Frequent travellers will ofteniompare their experiences from different airports and expect the standard of service to be maintained across the board, no matter where the service is coming from. While some airline companies will harm their brand image in times of crisis by making bad decisions, others will strengthen their loyalty programmes by living up to their values.
The example that came across a few times in my conversation with different people is ‘hate selling’, exposed by German flag carrier Lufthansa. This airline company decided to increase ticket prices to prevent people from flying this summer. While this solution might work for them temporarily, it will probably bring more long-term consequences.
This is what Thirza Schaap, CX strategist and trainer at CX Unraveled, answered when asked about simple actions CX teams can do to improve the quality of service during the time of disruptions:
1. Providing clear alternatives to a passenger when their flight is delayed or cancelled
I’ve seen cancellation notices two days before a flight without any new options, which causes lots of frustration and stress. Airline companies have options available when they cancel, so send those along with the negative message of cancellation.
2. Invest in customer service – both digital and physical
Make sure you have staff available to answer customer questions within a reasonable time span. Asking for help from the office staff is a good way for them to get closer to their customers.
3. Involve the customers themselves
Tell them what they need to do to go through the travel journey as efficiently as possible. Address tags on luggage, so they’re easily identifiable, timings and actual waiting times for the airport. Stretching it even further, you could ask passengers to help identify other people’s lost luggage while waiting for theirs. Make a game out of it – whoever can fill in the most details wins a prize.
Final thoughts: service design for customer trust
In June 2022, groundbreaking Parallel technology™ by Delta Airline was released. This was for travellers departing from Detroit. This solution allows up to 100 customers to simultaneously see personalised content tailored to their journey on a single digital screen.
While impressive and revolutionary, this solution comes along with potential issues I discussed in one of my previous articles on AI biases and surveillance. AI technologies and innovation are about trust. CX is about trust. Forrester’s research from 2021 defines a set of seven levers that influence people’s trust: accountability, competence, consistency, dependability, empathy, integrity, and transparency.
Looking at these seven levers from the passengers’ perspective, which airport first comes to mind? What would give you a piece of mind when travelling next time? Let’s answer this question from the CX professionals’ perspective. What inspiration can we draw from the current airport disruptions to come out of it with humanised, inclusive, and technology-powered service?